The Stratton Lift was the last of the four “Jeep Approved” lifts. We expected to find more about the company that built the lift since it had been in business since the late 1940s although it didn’t apply for the lift patent until 1960. While our research continues, to date, we have found little information.
One bit of data that could be extremely useful is a registry of known lifts. Nate over on the Early CJ5 Forum has start such a registry. If you are a Stratton owner please submit your information.
What information we do have is summarized in this article. Most of that information came from Internet research and from working with the Cleveland Public Library.
Researching Stratton Equipment Company
Our starting place for doing research is the Internet. The first issue is that while Newgren is a rather unique name, Stratton isn’t. The existence of Briggs and Stratton makes just for a unmanageable search. So narrowing our search to Stratton Equipment Company, Cleveland, OH did produce a couple of useful articles. The most important was Ronald R Stratton’s obituary.
A second early find was a listing of Stratton Equipment on the Classic Refuse Truck site. These two items lead us to contact the major research institutes in Cleveland. Only the Cleveland Public Library was able to offer assistance. A planned trip to the Spring Midwest Willys Reunion gave us a chance to do on-site research.
Ronald Stratton started the company in after WWII and sold it in 1963. We continue to attempt to obtain information on the production of the Jeep lift past the sale date.
Throughout the company’s history, Stratton had two Jeep related products. In addition to the lift, the company produced a tailgate lift for the forward control (FC) truck.
The Stratton lift patent is interesting reading. We have conjectured that the description may have been written by staff at Jeep. The complete patent is available here
And then we got an email…
We continue to work with Dave and Ernie to discover more Stratton history.